Leftist Peruvian Legislator: Mein Kampf ‘Is Right’ about Gay People

A leftist legislator of indigenous descent in Peru cited Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as an inspiration for his vote against legalizing same-sex civil unions in the South American nation.

Rubén Condori Cusi was one of 13 congressmen allowed to vote on the bill as part of the legislature’s Justice Committee. Explaining his vote,he toldArroba Radio:

I read Mein Kampf by Hitler–I don’t share his ideology–but he said that, [if you track] a prostitute, an ambitious man, a communist, you noticed that they were all Jews. It is an extreme case but, in part, it is right because there are “misconducts” [acts of misconduct] that are generated by certain lifestyles.

In the interview following his vote, Condori Cusi called homosexuality “a misconduct” and later added, “Matters regarding cleaning, ironing, cooking, those are gender-exclusive,” and “sometimes a woman becomes resentful against men, perhaps from abuse she received and … she becomes lesbian.”

“The state has a duty to promote the institution that we call family,” he concluded. “The state does not promote other things, like alcoholism.”

The bill, presented to the Justice Committee by openly gay Congressman Carlos Bruce of the centrist Possible Peru party, was soundly defeated with a 7-4 vote and two abstentions.

Condori Cusi is a member of the ruling Peruvian Nationalist Party, the leftist party of President Ollanta Humala. Like Humala, he is of indigenous descent–a member of the Aymara ethnic minority, of which Bolivian President Evo Morales is also a member. Morales himself has sparked controversy remarking on LGBT issues, once warning that eating chicken could turn men gay (and bald), and that these problems plague Europe because they eat genetically modified foods.

Discrimination against homosexuals has a long and storied history in Latin America leftism. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, arguably the founding mind of Latin American Marxism, established a concentration camp in Guanahacabibes, Cuba, for alleged LGBT individuals, placing a sign on the front gate reading “Work Will Make You Men,” a nod to Auschwitz.

Peru has one of the smallest Jewish populations in Latin America, estimated at 3,000 by the Jewish Agency for Israel. Media coverage of Condori Cosi’s statements has not touched upon his implication that Judaism is a deviant lifestyle akin to homosexuality, and the Congressman has not apologized for either his insult to the Jewish community or to Peru’s LGBT population.